Observations Surrounding the Cross …. Forgiveness

Luke 23:27 And following Him was a large crowd of the people, and of women who were mourning and lamenting Him. 28 But Jesus turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ 30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”…

33 When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified Him and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left. 34 But Jesus was saying, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves.

Note the difference responses of our Lord relating to the different participants in the Crucifixion narrative. In the context of the weeping and wailing of the “Daughters of Jerusalem,” Jesus doesn’t ask the Father to “forgive the Jews for they know not what they do.” In point of fact we know from earlier encounters with the Jews Jesus said that the vengeance of God upon the Jews for the killing of the Son of the Vineyard owner came at the cost of their very lives,

What, then, will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and destroy these vine-growers and will give the vineyard to others.” When they heard it, they said, “May it never be!” 17 But Jesus looked at them and said, “What then is this that is written:

‘The stone which the builders rejected,
This became the chief corner stone’?

18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”

For the Romans crucifying Jesus, Jesus pleads for the Father to forgive them. For the Jewish women lamenting the crucifixion of Jesus, Jesus, in a likely prophetic reference to AD 70, warns about the coming wrath of God.
This distinction between these two kinds of speech for two different kinds of people is also captured in the difference of Christ towards Judas and Peter. To Peter Jesus says,

31″Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. 32But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

While to Judas, Jesus says,

“What you are about to do, do quickly.”

The difference between Judas and Peter is one was the son of perdition while the other was one of the elect. One wonders if that might not be the discriminating difference also in the way Jesus does not plead forgiveness for the Jews who crucified Him but does plead forgiveness for the Romans who served as those executioners who would do the bidding of the Jews in crucifying Jesus Christ?

Addendum

Some have insisted upon reviewing Christ’s request for forgiveness for the Romans soldiers that at that point the Roman soldiers would have been forgiven at that moment, in the sense of sins forgiven, since the Father and the Son are in agreement. This overlooks one meaning of the word forgiveness.

One meaning of the word “forgiveness” can be deferment or temporary suspension of the charges. Sanday advocates for this in his commentary on Romans when reviewing vs. 25 of chapter 3 he notes that forgiveness (remission — paresis) may be a “temporary suspension of punishment which may at some later date be inflicted.” So, when the Lord Christ prays, “Father forgive them (suspend the charges for the time being) for they know not what they do,”  the request is for a deferment or temporary suspension of the charges. As such, when Jesus prays this I don’t think it is proper to think that at that point the Roman soldiers’ sin is forgiven in the sense of the debt canceled.

We should end here by noting that usually when forgiveness is used in the Scriptures it has reference to a legal and not emotional / psychological resolve. Forgiveness occurs after there has been a debt incurred followed by the legal satisfying of that debt. For example, when we are forgiven by God it is not because God has a warm fuzzy towards us and is willing to let bygones be bygones. God forgives us because our indebtedness to Him as violators of His law as been satisfied for us by the work of Jesus Christ in our stead on the Cross. Our forgiveness is thus a juridical (legal) reality. God forgives us because our debt has been paid by our surety.

(Surety — a person who takes responsibility for another’s performance of an undertaking, for example, their appearing in court or the payment of a debt.)

Modern man would do well to re-examine his idea of forgiveness. We tend to think that forgiveness is an emotional or psychological disposition towards someone who has committed offense when in point of fact forgiveness is a legal term that requires, when necessary, restitution before forgiveness can be extended.

What we typically call “forgiveness” is perhaps better termed charity or mercy.

 

 

Ezekiel 33:11 … It Doesn’t Mean what the Non-Calvinists say it Means

Say unto them: ‘As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?’

Ezekiel 33:11

This passage is often presented by non-Calvinists of various hues and stripes to try and prove that Calvinism is all wet with its affirmation of God’s total Sovereignty. The idea as presented by the Arminian is that here in Ezekiel we find God wanting something (the wicked turning) that He can’t get. Poor God, frustrated by the sovereign will of the Arminian and Molinist wicked.

However when we read this text as against other passages we know that a frustrated God, who can’t get the wicked to turn, is not an option.

Psalm 115:3 But our God is in the heavens;
He does whatever He pleases. 

Psalm 135:6 Whatever the Lord pleases, He does,
In heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps.

Daniel 4:35 “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, But He does according to His will in the host of heaven And among the inhabitants of earth; And no one can ward off His hand Or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’

So, how do we read this Ezekiel 33:11 so as to eliminate the idea that there is a contradiction here while at the same time frustrating Arminian and Molinist misconstructions?

The answer is to read the Ezekiel text in light of another text that explicitly says that there are some deaths of some people over which God does delight,

Psalm 116:15 Precious in the sight of the Lord
Is the death of His godly ones.

God does not delight in the death of the wicked. God does delight in the death of His saints. It would seem what we must conclude is that whether or not God delights in the death of someone is determined by their covenant standing with Jehovah. If one is part of the covenant community then God delights (and ordains) their death. If one is not part of the covenant community God does not delight (but does ordain) their death. So, God not delighting in the death of the wicked does not speak to a frustrated God but does speak to a God who delights in His people’s deaths because they are covenantally related to Him, but who does not delight in the deaths of those not His people because they are not covenantally related to Him and His wrath lies upon them. God not delighting in the death of the wicked then is a covenantal pejorative. It is as if God says to the wicked dying, “You’re outside the covenant. I could care less about your death.”

This would be consistent with God’s character we find elsewhere in Scripture. God is the one whom wicked men are to fear,

Luke 12:5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear the One who, after you have been killed, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear Him!

He (God) has brought back their wickedness upon them
And will destroy them in their evil;
The Lord our God will destroy them. (Psalm 94:23)

So, we see here that essential to God’s character marker of being Just is His absolute delight in defending His name against rebels by exercising Justice and Vengeance against the wicked. He does not delight in the death of the wicked because in the death of the wicked His disposition is Wrath against them as not being covenantally united to Christ.

So, what the Arminian has done with this text is to make it teach the opposite of what it does teach. The Arminian has a nasty habit of this kind of “exegesis.” The Arminian or the Molinist has to overturn the perspicuous plain teaching of countless Scripture in order to read this passage the way they do and they are perfectly willing to do so in order to get a frustrated God who wants to save the wicked but can’t and  then loses sleep over their loss.

Of course, this text is good news to the wicked because it reminds them again that there is only one solution to God’s lack of delight in their death and that is for them to repent and trust Christ who is the assuagement of God’s just anger against the wickedness.

Hat Tip Dan Brannan for putting me on this. 

Progressive Reduction … Progressive Advance and the Postmillennial hope

The movement of Scripture seems to require a postmillennial eschatology.

Think about it. The Old Covenant moves from the Universal to the Particular after the fall. After the fall God’s salvation design is towards all men, but after the flood and after Babel that design is particularized to one people (Israel). From there the failure of Israel, like the failure of mankind prior to the flood, means an even more progressive reduction moving to “the remnant” and then finally culminating in this progressive reduction in the election of Jesus Christ to be God’s representative for the Redemption of His people. However, with the resurrection of Christ, we find the reversal of the previous progressive reduction to a progressive advance and broadening of redemption. What had been, prior to the arrival of Christ, a redemptive movement of the many to the one, with the resurrection the redemptive energy reverses and is now from the one to the many. We are still looking at election and representation, but the further salvific development unfolds so that from the center reached in the resurrection of Christ the way no longer leads from the many to the One but rather, as seen in the incorporating of the Nations, the movement of Redemption is progressively advancing from the one to the many. Consistently traced out this pattern and trajectory requires a belief in postmillennialism.

This hour-glass movement of Redemption (progressive reduction and narrowing to progressive advance and broadening) is most clearly articulated in Galatians 3:6 – 4:7. In that passage St. Paul begins with the promise to Abraham and his seed and reveals how ultimately the promise is to the Christ (3:16) who effectuates the ransom by His substitutionary death (4:5). This vicarious atonement results in the broadening of Redemption’s reach as all men and people may now become descendants of Abraham (3:26, 29) by faith alone in Christ alone.  All may become “sons and heirs” (4:4-7) through baptism.

Maybe Warfield’s “Universal Postmillennialism” was correct?

In an interesting aside one can also see this double helix hourglass movement in the Christian measuring of time by way of metaphor. Before Christ (BC) the years are numbered in a progressive reduction. However, with the arrival of Christ (AD) the numbering of the years continues to climb progressively year by year. This becomes an excellent illustration for the way that the first Christians measured redemptive time. The center and focal point is Christ and with Christ time is reoriented with the Christ event. 

 

Multiculturalism as the New Religion in Town

Religion — Any system of faith and worship. In this sense, religion comprehends the belief and worship of pagans and Mohammedans, as well as of Christians; any religion consisting in the belief of a superior power or powers governing the world, and in the worship of such power or powers. Thus we speak of the religion of the Turks, of the Hindoos, of the Indians, etc. as well as of the Christian religion We speak of false religion as well as of true religion.

1828 Webster’s Dictionary

“The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth. . . . We must, therefore, worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on earth, and consider that if it is difficult to comprehend Nature, it is harder to grasp the Essence of the State. . . .[T]he State is the march of God through the world.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

It is my conviction that Religion is an inescapable category. All men organize their social order in subservience to, as Webster tells us, “belief of a superior power or powers governing the world.” Thus, all cultures are naught but the expression of the religion of the people who comprise that culture. Culture then is the religion of a people put into real life social order animation.

One thing we should immediately note is how ridiculous it is to make blanket condemnations as “all religion being bad.” Christians often do this by saying things like, “I don’t have a religion. I have a relationship.” Religion is an inescapable category and so while some religions are worse than others (and all are worse than Biblical Christianity) the reality is that all people and peoples are religious. This is true also of those (usually the atheist crowd) who say “I don’t have a religion.”  That this is true is explained by the fact that it is the religion of people who condemn religion that accounts for their condemnation of religion. The idea of something (in this case “religion”) being “bad” requires a moral foundation upon which to make such a pronouncement and that moral foundation is nothing else but an expression of a religion. In their statement, “I don’t have a religion,” or “Religion is wicked and accounts for all the evil of the world,” they are their own superior power that is governing the world (see Webster’s definition) and so their egoism is their religion. 

For most moderns the State is their god and so provides their religion as the Hegel quote indicates. For those non-Christians who haven’t taken the state as their god, the result usually is that they are their own gods, determining good and evil. As such their individual egos are their own religion. Religion is an inescapable category.

Given all that the above is true we might ask ourselves what is the religion of our culture. Below provides just a bit of a teasing out of the answer to that question.

I.) The Religion of Modernism

Multiculturalist Diversity

The irony here is lodged in the fact that the pursuit of multiculturalism finally arrives in the embrace of a monoculture as everybody is straitjacketed into the singular embrace of a uniform multicultural social order where the equality of all cultures create and reflect the monolithic religion behind multiculturalism.

II.) The Temple / Church of Modernism

US Government outlets (Civic bldgs., Schools, etc.)

All religions have a Temple or gathering place where the worshipers come to worship and be catechized. In the West, the Government facility has replaced the Temple as the Church of Modernism. In Church facilities, we educate our young into the state religion.  We send our tithes and offerings to the Church every year. We place our dead heroes in Temple like structures (think of the Lincoln Memorial). It is all really quite religious as in the State we live and move and have our being.

III.) Priest Class

Bureaucrats / Teachers / Ministers / Professional Class

All religions have a Preistcraft. Modernism as a religion is no different. The Priest class serves to guide the people in how to satisfy the god and how to practice the religion. The Priestcraft have a self-interest in perpetuating the religion since their lifestyle is dependent upon the religion being kept stoked. In the West, the God state is served by a Preistcraft that now includes almost the whole white collar professional class. Because of the totalitarian presence of the State nearly all the white collar professional class is beholden to the religion of multiculturalism and so supports it and inculcates it in all their doings. From Shrinks, to Shysters, to Ministers, to Teachers, to Businessmen, to Medial Doctors, to Academia, they all are tasked with serving multiculturalism as the religion and the State as God.

IV.)  Catechism Motifs

All religions have their catch phrases and pithy motifs that the Preistcraft must teach. In Christianity one might use as just one example, “the chief end of man is to glorify God and fully enjoy Him forever.” In the religion of multiculturalism, we get mindless pithy motifs that all are to embrace such as, “Diversity is our strength,” and, “White people are evil,” and “All people and all cultures are equal.” These and like simple-minded motifs constitute the lubricant that oils the thinking of the whole social order.

V.) Mission’s Agency

United Nations,  Evangelical Church Sending Agencies, US Military

Every religion has an agency whereby the religion is spread to others who are deprived of the great religion. In the social order of the West that Missions agency ranges from the United Nations publishing arm to the most Missionary agencies of most of the Denominations that constitute modern Christianity. Christianity has been reinterpreted through the grid of multiculturalism so that much of what is pushed as Christianity by missionaries (both home and abroad) is just another expression of multiculturalism. When nations are particularly resistant to being convinced of the truth of multiculturalism then we turn to the US Military to convert by the sword.

VI.) Criminal Code

Hate Crimes / homophobia / Sexist / Racist

Every religion develops a criminal code as to what is allowed and what is not allowed. Multiculturalism, as a religion, seeks to criminalize behavior that does not support the zeitgeist. As such multiculturalism creates hate crimes that punish with extra zeal those guilty of hating beyond the normal hate that comes with every crime. Further, homophobia, sexism, racism, while not yet criminal, are so deeply taboo that to violate them puts one outside the company of “civilized” people.

VII.) Propaganda Wing

Hollywood / Top 40 / Government schools / Media Outlets

Every religion has a propaganda wing. The propaganda wing of multiculturalism is Hollywood, Top 40 music of almost all genres, and Government schools, and newspapers, magazines, radio talk show, etc. All of these are not concerned with teaching people to think critically. All are concerned with teaching people what to think. All teach people the virtues of multiculturalism. We are bombarded with messaging that informs us that all relationships are equal. That all sexuality is equal. Christian white people are evil. Patriarchy is despicable. Heirarchy is bias.

VIII.) Main Goal

Overthrow Christianity

Samuel Francis, in his “Leviathan and Its Enemies,” captured this when he wrote,

“The persistence of traditional institutions and systems of belief constrains and impedes the continuing growth of mass organizations and their operations, and it is imperative for the emerging elites to challenge, discredit, and erode the moral, intellectual, and institutional fabric of traditional society that sustains the older elites and the systems of beliefs, or ideologies, on which their rule is based.”

The goal of multiculturalism is to completely destroy Christianity as the religion of the West. It has been largely successful to that end. The emerging multicultural elites are doing all in their powers to overthrow Christ and Christianity in favor of the cultural marxism that drives multiculturalism.

VIII.) Chief method to that end

The use of Critical theory to destroy White people

Critical theory was a means developed to viciously attack any aspect of thinking that had Christianity as its origin. It presupposed that Christian thinking was responsible for social orders that enslaved. It was leveraged as upon the foundation of Cultural Marxism and so all the criticism as run through the prism of Cultural Marxism in order to smash Christianity as evil. The reason that it especially is pointed on White people is that the Cultural Marxist understood that White people have been, historically speaking, the main carriers of Christianity and the builders of Christian civilizations. The Cultural Marxists of the Frankfurt school (the origin of movement multiculturalism) understood that if white people are destroyed the consequence is that Christianity will be destroyed.

This also explains the push for amnesty and the immigration crisis that the West is facing.

IX.) High Holy Days

Martin Luther King Day / 4th of July / Veterans day

Every religion has its own high holy days. Multiculturalism is no different. This explains why multiculturalism so intensely makes “war on Christmas.” Multiculturalism understands that Christmas is a high, holy day in competition with its own high holy days. The high holy days of multiculturalism celebrates egalitarianism and diversity, or the god-state and those who have died for it. (Why anybody can’t see the contradiction in praising, at the same time, both diversity and egalitarianism is quite beyond me.)

X.) Enemy of “The People”

a.) Epistemologically self-conscious Christians
b.) Trustee Family
c.) Property

Multiculturalism understands that it has enemies that it must snuff out. We noted above that Multiculturalism, as a religion, understands that its greatest threat is Christian white people. This category just refines that a wee bit further. Multiculturalism understands that the “enemy of the multiculturalist people” are especially those who are epistemologically self-conscious Christians. Epistemologically self-conscious Christians see through the three-card monte con of multiculturalism and so are understood as a threat and so must be professionally destroyed.

The Trustee family is such a distinct enemy of the adherents of multiculturalism because the Trustee family embraces hierarchy and patriarchy, and so eschews egalitarianism.

Property also is seen as an enemy of multiculturalism because property introduces a “mine, not yours” mentality which wages wars on everyone being and having the same.

So, this is a brief description of the new religion of the West. It is a description that seeks at the same time to reinforce that religion is an inescapable category that can’t be avoided. Either we will return to Christ and so have abundant life again or we will embrace some other religion of death.

Eschatological Musings

“The whole content of Paul’s preaching can be summarized as the proclamation and explication of the eschatological time of salvation inaugurated with Christ’s advent, death, and resurrection.”

Herman Ridderbos
Paul: An Outline of His Theology — pg, 44

For Christians, the Redemptive sequence of events initiated by the birth of Christ marks the future eschatological age as invading the present non-eschatological age. As such, for every Christian since the 1st advent the present crackles with the meaning that the future invests it with. For every Christian died with Christ, is now resurrected with Christ, is now seated with Christ in the heavenlies and is reigning now with Christ. Every Christian has the Holy Spirit who is the anticipation of the end as occupying the present. Every Christian has been translated from the Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God’s dear son. Every Christian is tasting of the powers of the age to come in their existential present. We are living in the eschatological latter days in our current existence because with Christ’s work the latter days have arrived.

Christians are like Tolkien’s elves who occupy two worlds at the same time. As being citizens in the age to come we are God’s agents of change as inveighing against this present evil age wherever we find it. We are those whom God uses to turn the wilderness of this present wicked age into the garden of the Lord so that it blooms with age to come ferocity.

All of this makes us a future-oriented people but it is a future orientation which is rooted and grounded in the past because the future orientation is dependent upon how the Christ event brought the future into the then present.

It is true that we are moving towards the future eschatological age but this is only true because in the Christ event the future eschatological age located and locates itself in the present.

All of this is why St. Paul could say, “We are more than conquerors.”